


pomegranates

by kwritten



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Greek and Roman Mythology, The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, F/F, Female Friendship, Female-Centric, Genderswap, Greek and Roman Mythology - Freeform, Hades and Persephone, Mythology - Freeform, POV Female Character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-15
Updated: 2015-08-03
Packaged: 2018-04-09 13:08:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4349993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kwritten/pseuds/kwritten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hades are born, they grow, are molded. Persephone are created, plucked from the air and then hidden away. Easy to find and easy to miss.<br/>Elena ends and therefore begins. On the edge of the solar system, she is given a quest: to find the Persephone to her Hades and restore balance to the Underworld.  (university-au (ucla); everything you know about the characters is still true, with some minor canon alterations that will be made clear)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. on the edge of space

The sands of a rock with the surface square mileage of about six million hurtling about on the fringes of a young solar system are about what you’d expect. Rough, cold, brittle. The texture beneath her bare feet reminded her of sand and ice simultaneously. Which maybe isn’t what she expected, if she had expected anything at all, but it also didn’t feel like a surprise. When she awoke here, she felt like she was hurtling too quickly through space, that the stars at any moment would crash onto the fragile, flaking skin of the tiny planet she walked upon. She held her arms out to the cool air, to the stars rushing past, and welcomed the relief of fire, the relief of an end. 

_This is your end,_ a soft voice whispered in her ear. 

“This is my beginning and yet I am already tired. Is existence always so _full_?” she wanted to shout, but didn’t know how. She wanted to rail and scream and cry, but she felt dry and hollow. There was no voice to her voice, no volume to her shout, in the great expanse she was a tired whisper clinging to a bare rock. 

_Endings are always beginnings. That is your gift. That is your truth. That is what you **are**._

She sat down on the cold hard ground and winced, “I feel bruised.”

_You are new. You are old._

A scowl crossed the girl’s face, “ _You_ are annoying and invisible and talk in riddles. Where am I? Why am I here?”

A tall woman with dark skin and vibrant, curling hair in a long red robe appeared in front of the girl and looked down at her, _You are asking the wrong questions._ That’s what they always say in fairy tales and great legends of knights and heroes at moments like these. The woman’s lips quirked into a smirk at the thought. She liked this part, she was old enough to know her cues by heart, she was young enough to still think of it as a game. 

“So give me the right answers and I’ll figure out the questions on my own.”

The woman’s eyebrow rose, amused. _You walk in cemeteries, you care for the dead, you bring with you fire and ice that destroys, you bring a chill into men’s hearts, you are a comfort in the darkest hour. No one will ever want you and yet they will pray for you when they have lost all hope._

“What is my name?”

_You have many names._

“What is the name of this rock?”

_Mortals have named it after you._

“I am not mortal?”

_You were once. Your kind always do._

“Why?”

_Each has their own answer. You must find your own._

The girl looked down at her bare knees and sighed. A strand of hair floated into her field of vision, it was long and brown. She had the distinct memory of pulling her long hair into a ponytail at the back of her head, curling it elaborately, twisting it into a knot, brushing it away from her forehead with her fingers, the feel of it wet against her back as she rose from water into a thick summer’s heat. 

“I was a girl. I fell asleep.”

_And now you are awake._

“What is your name? Are you the same as me?”

_We are the same and not the same. I have many names, like you._

“Which name…” the girl considered, biting her lower lip. “Which of your names is the most important for me to know in this moment? Which of your names will help me learn what to do next?”

The woman grinned so brightly the girl could have counted her teeth, _Sometimes, I am Jupiter._

The girl stood up, “Zeus. You are Zeus. The king of the gods.” 

The woman inclined her head, _Today, that is what you need to hear. This is what you asked._

“This rock, is Pluto – right?” The girl began to pace, tugging at her hair. “Which makes me …” she stopped and tears sprang to her eyes. “Death. You made me Death.”

_Death comes from an ending. You ended. And therefore Death began._

“People die all the time, that doesn’t make them the King of the Underworld.”

_You did not die. You ended. And so something had to begin._

Pluto narrowed her eyebrows, “You are talking in riddles again.”

Jupiter smiled back, folding her hands delicately in front of her. 

The girl sighed, “I’m asking the wrong questions.”

_You are learning much more quickly than your predecessor._

“Are there many like me?”

_Thousands. Millions. One for every star in the sky. One for every star that has burnt out and for each that has not yet formed._

“And we are not the same as you?”

 _There are eons of time held in my hands, like grains of sand. You cannot have all of them._

Pluto looked up at the stars, they whirled past at impossible speeds. She had the sudden knowledge that if she wanted, it would all slow down, she could direct her own Time if she wanted. It filled her with dread, this sense of responsibility. 

“I am Death.”

 _Death. Hel. Osiris. Kali. Barastyr. Yeomra. Izanami. Ereshkigal. Freyja._ Jupiter paused, her eyes darkened with a sorrow that Pluto felt as though she could reach out and touch with her hand, whether to pull it away or make it stronger she could not guess and so she willed her hands to remain at her side. _Hades._

“How can one person be so many names?” She shook her head, “Don’t answer that.” 

_It is something you must find your own answer to._

“It is too many names, too many things in my head. Maybe I’m still very human after all, but I very much would like to be _one_ thing for a while. And nothing large and grand. I don’t think I can be Death or Kali or Hades right now. So tell me, Jupiter, what was my name in the last place I was? What name did I carry when I stopped?”

_That is not the right question._

The girl flung her arms wide, “My planet. My questions.”

Jupiter narrowed her eyes, _A shining light. A bright one. Elena._

“A silly name for Death, Elena.”

_Your sands of time are slipping through my fingers faster and faster little one._

“Okay, okay. I get it.” Elena conjured up a chair of rock with one hand and sat down, folding her legs up underneath her and trying not to show how startled she was at this sudden show of force.

_You learn quickly. Good._

Elena rolled her eyes, “Okay so. I was human or something and I went to sleep. Now I am Death. But you can’t tell me what I’m supposed to do. Like you didn’t sit me down or give me a manual or anything, which probably means that … like I need to go on a quest or something. And well… that sucks. That’s like showing up to your first day of work and finding out that you have to learn everything on the go, without any training, _and_ do the boss’ job, too.”

_I am not your ‘boss’ little one._

“No, but you are bigger and older and annoyingly cryptic.”

Jupiter sat down in a chair that seemed to be made of molten lava, it boiled red and black and yellow like her namesake, _You are slipping back into yourself._

Elena cocked her head to one side, “I do feel a bit like I’m puffing out, becoming four dimensional after a long time of being flat.”

Jupiter chuckled, _Yes. I suppose that’s how it would feel._

“So back to the problem I have which is the ‘quest’ that you can’t tell me about because… oh _shit_.”

Jupiter blinked at her. 

“Hades…” Elena groaned and slumped down in her rock chair. “I have to go on a quest to find Persephone, don’t I?”

_Hades are born, they grow, are molded. Persephone are created, plucked from the air and then hidden away. Easy to find and easy to miss._

Elena looked around at her bare rock planet and sighed, “I should be _working_ , being Death. I don’t have time to fall in love and seduce someone. Anyway how the fuck do I even begin? Just start seducing every pretty girl I see?”

Jupiter leaned back in her chair with a smile, _You have Time on your side. You have gifts that outweigh Death._

“It won’t work without her here, will it? I am destruction and she is life, the Underworld cannot maintain a balance without both of us.”

Jupiter looked to the stars and listened to something or someone far away, and then looked back at Elena curiously, _I cannot answer that question now. Ask it again later._

Elena shrugged, “That’s not my question anyway. I want to know what her name is. The girl I’m looking for. Tell it to me and then I will find her.”

_It does not matter if I tell you, you will know her._

“Tell me anyway. It’s the only thing I want to know. I want to be prepared.” She stood up, “And don’t tell me it’s the wrong question. It’s the only question.”

_Dawn._

“Dawn? Seriously? Kinda obvious don’t you think?”

_You may not, when you meet her._

“You know her?”

Jupiter stood up, took Elena’s hands in her own, and kissed her cheeks one at a time. _Sleep now, little one._ Elena collapsed instantly, falling like a stone into Jupiter’s waiting hands. 

A man appeared at the woman’s elbow, dressed all in yellow, _Is she ready?_

Jupiter gathered the girl in her arms like a newborn, as if she weighed nothing at all, _More than most. Less than some._

 _Why do you have these meetings every time? They won’t remember,_ he put his arm around her shoulders and squeezed her affectionately. Gone was the mysterious, cryptic god that teased a young girl and in her place a blushing, lovely bride. 

_They remember. They just don’t remember that they remember._

He kissed her head and looked down at the girl with curiosity, _You have great faith in this one, don’t you? More than the others._

Jupiter sighed, _I am terribly easy to disappoint._

_It is a terribly difficult task, my love._

_And if they could achieve what they must in a secret garden alone and undisturbed, I would always do it that way,_ Jupiter said stubbornly. 

_That… didn’t really work out so well for us the first time, remember?_ he smiled at her even if his words held a hint of bitterness. 

_Frigg sees great things in this one’s future, Juno. Do not take her lightly._

_I would never tease Frigg. Never,” Juno held up one hand to his heart as though taking an oath. _Except on days when the sun rises and sets.__

_Jupiter giggled and kissed her consort on the lips softly, _I do love you, you silly man.__

_They looked towards the stars, Elena’s head cradled between them. _Gaia is waiting. Impatiently, probably.__

_She sighed, _Old girl really does hate this part.__

__We all hate this part._ _

_Jupiter leaned down and whispered in Elena’s ear, _It’s because we all believe in you, we’re all cheering for you, don’t you **ever** give up._ She straightened and took Juno’s hand in her own. _

_"Elena. Elena? ELENA?!"_

_Elena wiped the sleep out of her eyes, wincing at the crusty after-effects of a long night and peeked out from beneath her comforter._

_"WHAT?!"_

_Her best friends smiled down at her, "Wake up, sleepy head! Pop quiz in Physics today and we brought coffee!" Caroline wiggled coffee at her enticingly._

_Elena narrowed her eyes and considered for a moment. Bonnie's eyes twinkled at her from behind Caroline's shoulder. _Nope.__

_She ducked back under the covers and shouted, "You are all far too awake, I refuse to take part in any Monday that is this jolly."_

_Bonnie's slight pressure dipped down the right side of the bed and a soft hand lay on her shoulder, "It's Thursday, sweetie."_

_"Monday is as Monday does," Elena grumbled from beneath the blanket._

_"That doesn't make any fucking sense," Caroline said cheerfully from somewhere near what Elena hoped was the door._

_"Sense is sense-making, okay?"_

_"Are you still drunk, sweetie? How late where you out?" Bonnie's voice came low and concerned._

_"Sorry but," a new voice jutted into their conversation that Elena had never heard before. "I think I'm lost and your door was open and maybe I'm just easily manipulated by the scent of coffee to betray my inner compass but um... Where is room 702?"_

_"Oh... it's down the hall by the elevator. I know everything is numbered funky in this building," Caroline said bubbly to the intruder._

_"And this _is_ Hedrick Hall, right? Because some dudebros in the quad twisted me all around and I walked into 702 Sproul and ... yeah you don't want to know what I found there. But it definitely wasn't my new room."_

_Elena groaned, why was this interloper talking so quickly?! and so much!? didn't they know it was MORNING???_

_"Yeah, this is Hedrick," Bonnie called to the door in her best friendly Miss America voice. "Why are you moving in so late in the semester?"_

_"Well... I'm actually a grad student and was over in the apartments on Rose Avenue but... long story long my adviser found a double for me to move into... so... here I am!" The last was said bravely and awkwardly._

_"Grad school? You look twelve if you're a day," Caroline said with a laugh. It was her 'I'm not laughing at you except I'm totally laughing at you' giggle that Elena could recognize even in the din of a campus bar._

_"I'm nineteen. I'm... really smart?"_

_"Hey," Bonnie stood up. "Sorry about Caroline. You don't look twelve, you just don't look like an overworked grad student is all."_

_"No bags under my eyes or a gross cat-lady sweater?" the stranger's voice was full of mirth. "I totally get it. Just wait until midterms, my true nature will come out in full force."_

_Elena smiled, maybe if they kept talking to the new girl, they'd forget about her and the pop quiz and let her get back to..._

_"Hey, we have an extra coffee that I don't think our friend is going to--"_

_In a flash, Elena bounded out of the bed and snatched the coffee out of Bonnie's hand. "You were saying?" she said sweetly, before turning to the girl in the hallway to ... apologize or not apologize or something._

_And it was at that moment that she realized three very important things:_

_(a) she was wearing a pair of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle panties  
(b) she never took off her makeup and the mirror next to the door revealed that mascara and lipstick had glomped together on her cheek into a nightmarish blob  
(c) the girl who had nearly stolen her much-needed coffee was fucking _hot__

_So instead of saying anything witty at all, Elena blushed and muttered, "Sorry."_

_"A girl after my own heart," the girl winked at her. "I would kill my friends if they tried to offer up any of my coffee."_

_"Do you have a lot of friends in the area?" Bonnie inquired, nudging Elena as she slunk behind her friend, face bright red._

_"Not many," the girl said with chagrin. "I transferred from ... yeah well I just moved here. And the rumors are true: grad students are basically vampires without a social life. I moved to LA and I can't even remember what the sun looks like."_

_"Well hey, once you move in, drop by any time," Bonnie said warmly, nudging Elena with her elbow again._

_"Uh huh," Elena mumbled._

_"Sure! If I have time."_

_"Oh," Caroline flipped her hair over her shoulder. "We'll drag you out. I clearly don't need to make you into a project," her gaze lingered over the girl's jean jacket with quirky patches, blue sundress gathered at the waist, and knee-high boots, "but that doesn't mean all that hot should be locked away in the library all the time, either."_

_"Sounds great!" the girl smiled broadly. "I'm Dawn by the way."_

_"Caroline. And this is Bonnie. And the mute coffee addict is Elena. She's usually much more charming."_

_Dawn dimpled, "I believe it." She looked down at her watch, "Shit. I gotta meet my roommate before she locks me out or something. Catch ya later!"_

_Caroline shut the door and whirled around to Elena with a huge smile on her face, "Oh my god, Elena. You are positively _smitten_!_


	2. daisies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mildred Defries is a real and totally legitimate person with a grave - just the way I've described - at the Evergreen Memorial Park in Los Angeles. here is a link to a picture of her grave, for reference: http://billiongraves.com/pages/record/MILDRED-DEFRIES/14654350?record_id=14654350#given_names=MILDRED&family_names=DEFRIES (It took a really long time to find someone that was about right for this story, but I'm so glad that I found Mildred! Her epitaph was too perfect to walk away from.) I have never been to the Evergreen cemetery in LA before, so my description of it is probably inaccurate! I'm doing the best that I can :)

“How is it raining? Isn’t this southern California? Isn’t it illegal to rain here or something?”

Caroline leaned back from her hunched position over the mirror, her bright purple bottle of mascara in her hands, “I don’t think that’s how it works sweetie.”

“Well if I were in charge, I would make rain illegal. Especially in places where people are _clearly_ not equipped for rain. It’s like there’s no gutter system in all of Los Angeles.”

Bonnie wrinkled her nose and looked down from her brightly decorated (and highly coveted) top bunk, “You haven’t even seen all of LA. How could you possibly know that?”

Elena slammed down her wet books on the floor and started to strip out of her wet clothes, “I know stuff.”

“You know what I know?” Caroline tapped her hand delicately on the barrel of her curling iron before picking it up and wrapping a lock of hair around it, “I know that there is a party tonight and I won’t invite you unless you get a serious attitude adjustment.”

Elena flung herself on the single bed on the other side of the room from the bunk beds the other two girls shared, dressed only in her third nicest boyshorts and her fourth nicest bra, and groaned, “Party bad.”

“Elena? Are you okay? You’ve been kinda… off lately?”

“Don’t even start, Bonnie. If she wants to waste her sophomore year of college lying on her bed in her panties and whining about a sun shower, that’s her business…” Caroline’s voice faltered. “Although… have you eaten anyone today?”

“We promised no eating people,” Bonnie reprimanded from above. 

“You know what I mean,” Elena could practically Caroline rolling her eyes. “How much blood have you had today?”

“Some?” Elena thought for a minute, “None, maybe? But I don’t feel hungry.”

Bonnie jumped down, landing in a crouch in the center of the room, “You may not feel it, but we all are. You’re as cranky as a two-year old without their afternoon snack.” Bonnie flung the curtain they had hung up over the side of Elena’s raised bed frame and opened the mini-fridge tucked away underneath. They were only technically allowed one fridge, but for the sake of Bonnie, there was a blood-fridge hidden under Elena’s bed and a human-friendly fridge (mostly full of wine and cheese ala Caroline) out in the open. 

A bag landed on the bed beside Elena’s head.

“Drink the whole thing.”

“It tastes funny.”

“What type is it?” Caroline inquired, her voice muffled. 

“She hasn’t even tried it yet.”

Elena rolled over and spread her arms and legs out wide, “There’s something wrong with me.”

“You’re _hungry_ ,” Bonnie said gently, sitting down beside her and poking her in the stomach. “Look at you, you’re wasting away.”

“That’s not even possible,” Caroline snarked from her corner. “I saw Katherine after the tomb. You will get grey and gross, but you won’t get thinner.”

Bonnie made a face at Elena, “Thanks for your help, Care.”

Elena put a hand over her mouth to stop herself from giggling. 

Caroline appeared over Bonnie’s shoulder a half a second later, “Are you guys coming to this party with me or not?”

Bonnie grimaced, “Sorry, I have a group project and I gotta meet up in the library in an hour.”

Elena sucked down on the blood and tried to ignore her stomach churning, “Even if I was feeling like the top of my game, I have tons of Bio homework.”

“Time management, Elena. Didn’t you even look at my schedule?” Caroline gestured to the brightly colored whiteboard that took up the entire space of wall between their one window and the bunk beds. 

“I did, you just didn’t give me enough study time, or something…” Elena wrinkled her nose at the wall, craning her neck so that she was looking at it upside down behind her. “What is _personal recreation_ supposed to mean, anyway?”

“And how is it different from _group recreation_ and _physical recreation_?”

“Group is time for us to spend together. Physical is for working out. Personal is for sex.”

“You _scheduled_ time for sex!?”

“And _dating_! Just so that you wouldn’t get so distracted by classes and studying and forget about all the hotties down here.”

“That doesn’t sound like us,” Elena threw the empty blood bag into the trash at the foot of her bed and hoisted herself up on her elbows. 

“Definitely doesn’t sound like us.” Bonnie agreed, her smile crooked and one eyebrow raised, “How do you know I didn’t make up that whole thing about studying and am not about to go meet a ‘hottie’ tonight?”

Caroline stood up and clapped her hands together, “I never doubted you for a second Bonnie Bennett.”

Elena laughed, “Don’t look at me. I’m wallowing with my Biology textbook tonight and when I start to feel really awful, I’m thinking reruns of _Grey’s Anatomy_ with chocolate peanut butter ice cream.”

“Wow. That sounds about a hundred and ten percent better than what I have to do tonight.”

Elena’s eyes shot to the door and saw Dawn – the girl from down the hall, the very _hot_ girl from down the hall – leaning against their doorway with a tired smile on her face, her hair pulled back in a messy bun at the nape of her neck and a long, grey dress that reached her bare toes hugging her narrow curves. She fought very hard the urge to throw herself under the bed and never come back out from underneath it. 

“I have those books you asked for, Bonnie. I hope they help with your paper,” Dawn held out an armful of dusty, dilapidated old books that Elena thought irrationally Alaric would have loved to get his hands on. 

“These are great! How did you even get these?” Bonnie shot up and ran over to the books, her arms outstretched. 

“They’re from my… my family’s private collection. Sort of. I’m trusting you with my life.”

Caroline rolled her eyes at Elena and threw her the coveted pink fuzzy robe that none of them could remember the original owner of. “Still working on that thing for your advisor?” she asked Dawn.

The tall girl rubbed her face with her hands, “No. Something different tonight. Kinda time-sensitive.”

“How can anything dealing with Medieval Literature be time sensitive?” Bonnie queried, her brows furrowed together. 

“Grants, most like,” Elena croaked out as she shoved her hands through the arms of the robe and pulled it tight around her. “Or a presentation of some kind.”

Dawn smiled tightly, “Something like that. Anyway, sorry I can’t be your wingman at the party tonight, Care.”

Caroline shrugged, “I don’t really need one. I just thought you three could use a night out.”

“How about a rain check?” Dawn pushed herself off the doorframe and wobbled a little bit. 

“How about a rain check and a night _in_ instead of out, hey?” Elena suggested. “Movie night. Friday. 

“That sounds great, actually!” Bonnie exclaimed, placing the musty books on her bed gently. “A real girl’s night with pajamas and junk food.”

“Yeah, okay. Friday. It’s a date,” Dawn beamed at her from the doorway and Elena tried very, very hard not to blush. “Gotta bounce.”

Bonnie picked up her purse and breezed out the door after her, “See you later, I’m already late.”

Caroline looked down at her phone, “It’s kinda early for me to show up to this party, but I promised a girl from my Psych class I’d help her get ready. She’s a total nightmare, no fashion sense whatsoever.”

“You’re dragging her out, aren’t you?”

“By the skin of her teeth.” Caroline blew a kiss on her way out the door, “Ciao darling.”

Elena flopped back on the bed once she was sure Caroline wasn’t going to come barging back through, threw the robe onto the floor, and fell asleep.

(She got a 4.5/5 on her pop quiz in Biology the next day and smirked.)

 

It’s not exactly that she didn’t enjoy her major or feel a little bit like she should have lived her whole life this close to so many white sandy beaches, it was just that it felt strange to look up from her phone in her History lecture and not see Alaric smirking at her. The weather (aside from the smog) felt a bit like heaven, she had never felt so much bright, hot sun in her life – but she missed the trees and the sticky heat of a southern summer. She went out their third week and bought a humidifier for their room. She felt dried out and brittle. 

It’s not exactly that she wasn’t happy where she was, she just felt like something essential was missing, something just on the niggling edge of her brain that she had forgot. 

Later that week, she sat down in a lab and felt convinced that she had forgotten her pen back at the dorm, After a full ten minutes of digging through her backpack and cursing under her breath, the TA came up to her and handed her the pen that had been sitting on the desk in front of her the whole time. 

“Is this what you are looking for?” he had ridiculously long eyelashes and freckles across the bridge of his nose and a dimple hiding in the lower corner of one cheek. The old Elena would have flashed him her best smile and shined. Instead, she scowled and took it back from him with a snap. Trudging home after the lab she stopped short and tugged on her hair, _who was the old Elena anyway?_

She turned around on the spot and headed off campus, catching the first bus that she could and huddling in the back. It was early afternoon on a Wednesday and the bus she chose was somehow inexplicably full of old ladies on their way to a BINGO hall. She listened to their half-shouted and half-heard conversations, a hodgepodge of anecdotes about grandchildren, old memories floating to the surface, and complaints over their failing bodies. For some reason she couldn’t quite put her finger on, being surrounded by this babble felt homey, felt comforting. They got off with the same surge of energy that they appeared, leaving behind one wrinkled old woman in an old fashioned hat with a bouquet of daisies in her gloved hands. 

She looked back at Elena and smiled, ‘Where are you going honey?”

Elena moved forward a few rows to sit across the aisle from the woman as the bus rocked gently along, “I’m not sure exactly, just needed… some fresh air.”

The woman shook her head disapprovingly and handed her half the daisies from the bundle on her lap, “You’re coming with me.”

Elena thought about protesting, Caroline and Bonnie would definitely have some choice words about her following a strange old woman to god-knows where, but instead she buried her face in the daisies. They smelled like springtime in her mother’s garden, rolling around in the grass, laughing ad spraying each other with the hose, fingernails caked with dirt. A tear trickled down her face and splashed on one of the wilting petals. 

The old woman stood up with a heavy sigh, “This is our stop girl.”  
Elena stood and immediately felt the heavy weight of the woman’s hand on her arm.

“These damn hips girl, you’ll have to be my legs. We have a ways to walk.”

The bus driver tipped his hat as Elena eased the old woman off the bus and onto the sidewalk. They shuffled through the expansive – and crumbling – cemetery at an impossibly slow pace. After about ten minutes Elena wondered out loud, “Do you come here alone very often?”

The woman snorted good naturedly, “Better to come alone than with an impatient young person trying to rush me along.”

Elena smiled and took a deep breath, “I just meant with your hips. Isn’t it painful to walk all this way on your own?”

“Well now,” the old woman stepped off the path and headed up a small hill, “not as painful as staying away.”

After a few more minutes of shuffling through the thick grass that lined the grounds between the maze of tombstones, the old woman stopped in front of one that read simply, _FRIEND. HUSBAND. BROTHER._ The name and date worn off with age and time. There were weeds covering the stone, crawling up the sides. 

“Get your young knees and hands in gear, girl,” the old woman took the bouquet of now nearly dead flowers from Elena’s hand and added it to her own bunch of fresh ones. 

Elena knelt down in the cool grass and began pulling viciously at the tough weeds and dandelions sprouting up at the base, the old woman’s presence steady behind her all the while. When she had finished, Elena sat back on her heels and smiled. The gravestone looked loved, cared for, despite the lack of name. 

“What was his name?” she looked back at the woman, squinting into the sunlight. 

The woman hesitated, and if there hadn’t been a shadow over her face, Elena would have seen a flash of confusion there, “Oh it’s been lost to time I suppose. I used to come here with my grandmother.” She handed the flowers down to Elena, who placed them on top of the stone gently. “I have a few pet stones like him. Try to divide my time.”

Elena brushed off her jeans as she stood up, “This place reminds me of home, the trees, the calm. It’s almost like we aren’t in the city anymore at all.” She looked out at the grounds, seeing the tight, maze-like cemetery where her parents were buried. “I used to take my diary to…” Elena frowned, “I can’t even remember the last time I wrote in a diary.”

“Bad habit, that.” The old woman reached down into her large carpet bag and pulled out a blank book with a dried flower pressed into the cover, “You’re at a crossroads, girl.” She handed the journal to Elena, “Take some of those flowers and find your own pet rock.”

Elena took the book and smiled at the morbidity of a vampire leaning against a nameless gravestone writing in her diary, “I should help you back to the bus stop.”

“Pfft! Nonsense. I can get to where I’m going on my own.”

Before Elena could protest, the old woman was shuffling away at a significantly faster speed than she had previously seemed capable of. Elena chuckled to herself and began wandering in the opposite direction. 

For the first few minutes, Elena forgot to look at the stones, just enjoyed being lost for a little while. Despite the trees and grass, it was eerily silent and still, no birds chirped or flew by, the city felt a million miles away, and despite the clear sky, hot sun, and lack of breeze, the air actually felt comfortably cool. 

Once she was suitably lost, closer to the main road but far away from the clearing where the old woman had left her, Elena found it. What she had been looking for… if she could even be certain that she was looking for anything in particular. 

Somewhere in the middle of a row, amidst a thousand others was _Mildred Defries_. Elena crouched on her haunches in front of the cracking and worn tombstone, tracing the simple epitaph with her finger as she whispered it aloud to herself

_ SISTER.   
TO KNOW HER WAS TO LOVE HER. _

She put the flowers, dry and devoid of color as though hung from the ceiling for months instead of just having been carried for a little over an hour, on the ground next to the stone. “Sorry it’s not much Midlred,” she smiled at the stone and pat it a bit, the way the old woman had. “But it’s the thought that counts, right?”

Elena stood up and looked around for a bit before shrugging her backpack off her shoulders and curling up on the soft grass, leaning her back against the narrow side of Mildred’s tombstone. The journal the old woman gave her was full of heavy, unlined paper. Elena smoothed her fingertips over the surface of the first page before placing the tip of her pen to it. The words flowed and flowed out of her like tears swallowed up in a tub of water. The moment took on a sense of hyper-focus, here is Elena, not the old-Elena, or a new-Elena, or some strange between-Elena grasping at the meaning of herself… here is a girl sitting still, writing, and not over-thinking. 

When she finally looked up, the sun was low in the sky and her cheeks were encrusted with dried, salty tears. After shoving the book and pen back into the backpack unceremoniously, Elena pressed her palm into the ground to lift herself up onto her feet. Instead of the soft, thick grass she was expecting, the ground was dry, hard, the grass yellowing and greying. Elena frowned down at the strange circle of dead grass she had been sitting on… and then shook herself a little. After adjusting the straps of her backpack on her shoulders, Elena pat the top of Mildred’s tombstone affectionately, “Thanks for the company.”

The same rambling bus with the same stoic driver picked her up a few yards away. Once she walked away, the strange spell that had seemed to come upon her when she arrived broke. Suddenly the city was alarmingly present, the skyline above the palm trees alight, the streets lining the grounds full of honking cars, laughing people, and a myriad hodgepodge of music. Despite the onslaught of sound and activity, the calm she had felt with the comforting presence of Mildred’s cool stone against her back remained with her. This time, the bus was full of high schoolers making their way home from an athletic event of some kind. The driver smiled genially when Elena jumped off the bus at the stop in front of her dorm. As the door shut behind her, she thought she heard him say something to her, but it was indistinct under the fight cheer the kids had started. 

There was a particularly unappealing smell coming from the cafeteria and she had already figured out three reasons Caroline couldn’t shoot down as to why they should order pizza for dinner that night by the time she opened the door to their dorm and found… no Caroline. 

No Bonnie. 

No… her dorm room had been invaded by the leggy brunette from down the hall that somehow had stranger taste in books than Bonnie and a more expansive wardrobe than Caroline and she was sitting - _unattended_ \- on the floor in the middle of their room looking at what appeared to be a Mystic Falls yearbook from their sophomore year of high school. 

“There’s no way Caroline gave that to you willingly,” Elena totally _didn’t_ wait to speak until her lips were just three inches from the other girl’s ear. 

Dawn giggled, “Bonnie shoved it at me on the way out the door. She said you’d be home before they got back with the pizza and snacks… but that was nearly an hour ago.”

“They left you alone in our room for nearly an hour?” Elena stood up and began unlacing her shoes, one hand on the wall behind her, her right foot crossed over her left knee. 

Dawn lifted one shoulder, her back still to the door, “They were a little confused why you weren’t already home. And before they left, Caroline gave me a full run-down of her lingerie drawer, so it’s not like there’s anything more for anyone to hide.”

Elena’s eyes shot to the fridge under her bed and laughed hollowly. Anyway, it wasn’t like the geeky Medieval Studies grad student was going to go snooping in their fridge and find their blood and then start a mob with pitchforks and … Elena narrowed her eyes. “Please don’t take this the wrong way but—”

Dawn whirled her head around, “Did you ever notice how when someone really wants to be rude, but doesn’t want the other person to call them out on it that they begin whatever they are going to say with _please don’t take this the wrong way_ or _I don’t mean to be rude_ it’s like all you have to do is wait for the _but_ in any sentence and then bam! You can practically get whiplash from the amount of social niceties that are broken just because you put a happy disclaimer on the beginning of a sentence.”

Elena stared down at the girl, Dawn’s green eyes were wide and full of humor, a smile lurking in the corner of her mouth. 

“What the fuck are you doing in my room?”

Dawn rolled her eyes and turned back to the yearbook, “Duh. It’s movie night. We planned it when I came in here on Wednesday to deliver that book to Bonnie. I was _your_ idea.”

Elena blinked at the calendar on the wall. It was so covered in Caroline’s bright handwriting; the dates were difficult to pick out. “It’s Friday already?”

“You must have a Monday through Friday lab. I had one too many of those during my undergrad, totally fucked with my internal clock.”

“You’d think it’d be the opposite,” Elena threw her backpack onto her bed, looked at it, and then threw herself on top of it, accepting any injuries from misplaced pens poking her through the bag as an acceptable loss. 

“Seriously? If I threw my body around like that, I’d end up with a broken spine.”

Elena turned her head to look at her, face smooshed against the pillow unattractively, and smiled, “Are you accident prone?”

“Last year I broke my foot in three places.” Elena opened her mouth to say something encouraging, but Dawn waved her hands to stop her, “My other ankle had just finished healing from a break a week before it happened.”

Elena laughed, a ridiculous snort coming from her nose that would have been embarrassing if (a) this girl hadn’t already seen her practically naked (b) she cared or (c) upon hearing the sound, Dawn’s face hadn’t squinched up like a bunny rabbit’s, her big eyes sparkling. “You need to be encased in bubblewrap before you leave the house.”

“That’s what my sisters always say,” Dawn conceded with a sigh. 

“You have many sisters?”

“Three… or one? Kinda two? Four? It’s complicated.”

Elena raised herself up on her elbow, resting her chin in her hand. 

“Okay… so Buffy she’s like. My _sister_. She’s awesome. Kinda scary awesome. Faith is like… like a foster sister or a step sister? It’s complicated. She’s also scary. (They’re all scary?) She wasn’t around much when I was a kid. Anya is Buffy’s best friend, she’s always been around. We call her an honorary Summers.”

“Are they like… going to steal my boyfriend scary or like, can’t bring a date home scary?”

Dawn coughed, “More like, _could probably kill me with their pinkie fingers_ scary. And anyway, bringing dates home isn’t so bad because Tara always backs me up because she’s like _amazing_ and keeps them in line. Buffy definitely stopped picking on me so much once she started dating Tara and like… Tara is the only person on the planet that Faith is legitimately afraid of I think.”

Elena smiled down at Dawn and she could tell it was one of her goofy, poofing-up-her-cheeks-smiles that she hates in photos that makes her look like a chipmunk, but she didn’t care. “I think I know what you mean. If someone asked me about my siblings, I’d probably begin and end with my little brother. But … Bonnie and Caroline are just important, you know?”

“Your brother… Jeremy, right?” Dawn started at Elena’s glare. “I saw him in the yearbook. Thought maybe he was a brother or a cousin or … I don’t know. Gilbert isn’t really a strange name. It could have been a coincidence but…”

Elena cut her off before her rambling took another dangerous turn, “Sorry yeah. Jeremy is my brother. He’s going to school in New Orleans.”

“Are you two very close?”

She shrugged, “So four sisters-ish. Anything else I need to be worried about?”

Dawn blushed, “Well… there’s kind of a Spike? He adopted us a few years ago. Really sweet guy if you can get past the complete douchey, _I’m such a badass_ chip on his shoulder. And Olivia, she really helped us out after my mom…”

“Oh!” Elena sat up with a start. “I’m so sorry… I didn’t… I mean…” She looked down at her hands, twirling the small silver band that her mother had once worn around her finger. “Me too.”

Dawn smiled ruefully, “We’re just two little peas in a fucking pod. Next you’ll be telling me…” a shadow crossed her face. “Nevermind.” 

Elena leaned against the wall and drew her knees up, hugging her legs to her chest, “Trust me, nothing is weird to me anymore.”

Dawn shook her head and closed the yearbook, “Maybe someday I’ll take that bet.” She crawled up into the bed next to Elena without a moment’s hesitation, settling in next to her, their shoulders and arms touching lightly. Dawn stretched her long legs out, her feet dangling off the bed and dancing a bit. It was probably the first time Elena had ever seen Dawn anything other than a skirt or a dress, sleek black running tights outlining her thighs and cutting off just below the knee. Her bare toes were painted bright neon green. 

Elena cleared her throat awkwardly. 

“So where were you anyway?”

Elena stared down at her knees blankly, “Um…?”

“I mean… usually the Bio lab closes around two on Fridays, but you didn’t come back until nearly seven? Did you get lost?” Dawn teased. 

“Oh!” Elena responded, surprised. “Yeah I started wandering. I found this old cemetery? It was really… _nice_. I spent most of the afternoon just, writing in my journal.” She turned her head to look at Dawn, “Is that totally weird? I’m a total dork.”

“That sounds… awesome actually. I’ve been meaning to visit some of the historical cemeteries in the area, but I’ve been so busy…”

“I’ll take you sometime!” Elena jumped in excitedly. 

Dawn’s eyes turned a dark, emerald green, “Like a…?”

“Hey you two! We’ve brought sustenance!” Caroline interrupted from the doorway, a huge smile plastered on her face.

Bonnie appeared over her shoulder, “Sorry it took so long, Dawn. I hope Elena was able to keep you company?” She shot Elena a sympathetic look and rolled her eyes in Caroline’s direction. Elena smiled back and shrugged her shoulders slightly. 

“Actually I just got here a few minutes ago,” Elena confessed. 

“Where the hell have you been all day?” Caroline sat down on the floor and put the pizzas in front of her. “You didn’t have any classes and you didn’t do your laundry like I put on the schedule.”

“ _I_ did laundry,” Bonnie interjected, sitting down next to Caroline and elbowing her a bit. “Our neighbor had her boyfriend over and so I escaped the gross noises of sex to sit down in the laundry room for a couple of hours with a book. It was nice.”

“More studying? Bonnie Bennett, you need to get a life.”

“ _Actually_ , it was a novel for a book club Dawn’s roommate turned me onto. Just silly, teen-lit fun. It was honestly the highlight of my week, I haven’t read just for fun in years I think?” Bonnie beamed at them for a second before starting to hand out napkins and soda cans. 

Caroline looked up at the schedule on the door, “I guess I _could_ schedule in some recreational reading time. We _all_ should be—”

“Care!” Elena dropped her knees to the bed in a butterfly and leaned over her feet, “For fuck’s sake—”

“Hey let’s start the movie,” Dawn interrupted with a smile, her hand coming down gently on Elena’s knee, pressing it down onto her own leg slightly. “I’ve been looking forward to this all day.”

Bonnie sighed audibly, “Yes please let’s! We have pizza and popcorn and tons of candy, we’re ready for a movie!”

Dawn leaned her shoulder into Elena’s, whispering, “Sisters, seriously.”

Elena bumped her back playfully. 

Caroline continued to chatter on about the schedule and a potential book-reading challenge for the three of them while she set up the movie ( _Northanger Abbey_ ) (Caroline’s choice). Bonnie cut in with an anecdote about her Poli Sci class and a girl who had slept through the previous session and woken up convinced she had entered a parallel universe. Dawn grossed everyone out by pouring hot sauce and ranch all over her pizza. And no one really watched much of the movie – except that the parts that Caroline squealed they couldn’t miss. 

 

 

In an old cemetery in Los Angeles, an old woman in a hat from a decade long gone stood in a row of tombstones and ran her gloved hand over them as she walked, a sad sort of expression on her wrinkled face. 

“She has no idea, she is an innocent,” the old woman said this with very little accusation in her voice, more a tired resignation. 

“It couldn’t be any other way,” Jupiter said, appearing in step beside her. “You know this, [Macaria](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macaria/). You agreed.”

A dragonfly landed in Jupiter’s curling hair, buzzed for a moment at Macaria, and then flew back again into the night. 

“Hades would not—”

“Your Hades has long since served his purpose,” Jupiter interrupted harshly. “All humans have an expiration date. Even those that have risen.”

“Like you,” Macaria’s voice dripped like acid into the still night. 

“Even you, blessed one.” 

The two women walked through the cemetery together, ancient beings long grown accustomed to the other’s presence. Around them, the city lived on, beating a rhythm like a beating heart, the veins long lines of lit up vehicles passing into the night sky. 

“I am tired. And old.”

“You make yourself tired and old,” Jupiter chuckled. 

“I grow more tired with your games, aunt.”

“You miss your father? Truly?”

The old woman shook her head, “He has been gone too long to miss. I regret…”

Jupiter lay a hand on the older woman’s shoulder, “You could not have taken his place. Or hers. Yours is a position of your own.”

Macaria sighed, “I am burning out, my light will not last forever.”

“Take comfort in your sisters. Take comfort in this girl. She can give you a renewal.”

“She is _dead_ , unnatural, unliving and yet living,” Macaria sneered. 

“And what are you?” Jupiter asked softly. She turned and walked away, slowly, serenely. A red glow emanating about her. “Do not call me again, niece. My love for your father will only take you so far. Continue to do your work, or another can be found.”

“You cannot replace every star in the sky!” Macaria shouted back at her, face red with rage. 

Jupiter turned around slowly, her eyes full of sadness, “And yet, I will do what I must to ensure a bright night sky.” 

“And so will you, child,” Juno said, appearing next to Jupiter, his eyes hard and unforgiving. “We _all_ do what we must.”

“Even entrusting the future to these children?” Macaria’s eyes filled with tears, “When the wound of my father is still fresh—”

“Hades died a millennia ago, Macaria!” Juno stepped forward, but was held back by Jupiter’s soft hand. 

“All of our wounds are always fresh, they never stop bleeding no matter how hard we try to heal them,” Jupiter whispered softly. “That is what it means to be immortal.”

In the silence that filled the space the two gods left behind in their wake, tears dripped down Macaria’s wrinkled face. She looked down at the tombstone she always came back to, again and again, and pat it gently. “I hope they are right, father. I hope they are right.”


	3. skulls covered in vines

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> advisors and chicken with mashed potatoes and journals and fires

Elena was alone in their dorm, sitting cross-legged on her bed, her hair falling over one shoulder and obscuring part of her textbook, like she cared, gnawing on the nearly empty bag of blood in her hand, when the door slammed open and Dawn fell in. 

Like literally fell, back flat on the ground, one leg twisted up and caught on the doorway. 

Elena looked down at the bag of blood in her hand and up at the red knee-high boot waving at eye level. She had about half a second before a normal person would start to right themselves and stand up, which meant she had less time than that to hide the blood bag and then come up with a reasonable excuse for not leaping up to help. In the half a second it took to think this out, use her vamp speed to dispose of the bag, and settle back on her bed, Dawn hadn’t moved a muscle. Elena peered over the edge of the bed down at her.

“Are you okay?”

Dawn turned her head around so that she could smile up at Elena, “I think I’m going to live down here now. The floor is nice.”

Elena’s gaze flicked to the boot in the air, down the length of Dawn’s bare thigh, to the dress that was now tangled up on her hips, “I don’t think the guys in the suite across the hall will mind if you stay there, but we might have to start charging.”

Dawn flushed, dropping her leg down to the floor and wriggling her skirt back over the top of her thighs. 

After a moment’s hesitation, Elena closed her books and set them on the desk behind her before flopping down on her stomach so that her head was closer to the door, resting her chin in her folded arms, “Do you fall down like that a lot?”

“All the time, Buffy says—“ Dawn stopped and then cleared her throat. “Ah… I was just dropping off books for Bonnie.” She stood up quickly, gathered up the books and put them on Bonnie’s bed. “Let her know I stopped by?”

Elena raised herself up on her elbows, “Well she gets out of class in a few you can just wait—“

“No, um…” Dawn shuffled her feet, avoiding eye contact. “I mean, I can’t. I gotta run to… so …” She shook her head and backed towards the door, “See you…”

Elena lay there, blinking at the open door, until Bonnie came home. 

 

“So! Miss… ah… Gilbert?”

Elena fixed her gaze steadily on the school-appointed advisor, a small, lean woman with wild flowing hair and a rather wild sort of way of moving about her cluttered office. 

Dr. Halverson smiled wildly, “Earlier today I had an hour-long conference with a girl who’s file said she was a psych major, convinced her to sign up for an internship at a day camp for troubled youth, only to discover an hour later that I’d had the wrong file in front of me all the while.”

Elena looked pointedly at the clutter in the office but said nothing in response. 

 

“That was the last slot at that camp, so let’s be sure to dot our I’s and cross our T’s?” She opened a file with a snap and leaned on her elbows. “Elena Gilbert, sophomore transfer from Whitmore College, pre-med. You had an… internship? At the hospital there, rather irregular for a first year undergrad, did you enjoy it?”

“Yes, um…”

“Letters of recommend from… a mayor, a sheriff, a… I must assume some sort of philanthropist, and a Dr. Saltzman, Early American History,” she raised her eyes to look at Elena. “Nothing from the professor in charge of your internship.”

Elena blinked, “No… she…”

“Died.” The woman smiled, “As did your parents apparently. And aunt. Your father was a surgeon? And you want to follow in his footsteps I expect.”

It wasn’t a question. Elena waited. 

“And what did your mother expect, that you would be a surgeon as well?”

Elena narrowed her eyes, “How is that relevant?”

Dr. Halverson closed the file and leaned back in her chair, folding her hands in front of her like a villain in a Bond movie, “Call it professional curiosity.”

Elena ground her teeth. 

“Okay, no bullshit? I’ve had hundreds of bright-eyed, busy-tailed freshman sit in that very seat and tell me all the reasons in the world why they are going to be the next greatest surgeon and every one of them had exactly one reason why they shouldn’t.”

“Their mother?”

“Their first childhood dream.” Dr. Halverson turned her chair and looked out the window. “Dreams come in phases, just like anything else. In your case, it’s _easier_ , simpler, to ask what dream you secretly shared with your mother when you were young. That’s the dream that will come along and nip at your heels when you are studying for an exam, or a surgical intern, when you are in your first year of residency, when you finally get the job you’ve been clawing your way to the top to get.”

Elena looked down at her knees. 

“You don’t have to tell me, if you don’t want to.”

“How often do people go back, change their minds,” Elena said to her shoes. 

“Ask me again sometime.” Dr. Halverson picked up a cup of coffee off her desk, took a sip, grimaced, and then put it back down. “Cold coffee is positively the most depressing thing in the world.”

“Writing,” Elena said, looking up. “My mother… writing. I was going to be a writer.”

Dr. Halverson slid forward in her chair excitedly, “Journalism, research, self-help, fiction?”

“Fiction, I suppose.”

She looked Elena up and down appraisingly, “Well now, isn’t that interesting?”

Elena moved her hands from the armrests to her lap and back again. 

“Come back in three weeks, I’ll have to move some things around – but I think I have something perfect in mind for you.”

“Three weeks?”

“Just in time for Thanksgiving break,” Dr. Halverson nodded, her attention already on a pile of papers on her desk. 

Elena sat for a moment, waiting. “Um? Dr. Halverson?”

“Call me Bennett, please. Dr. Halverson is my sister,” she looked up and smiled again. “Get out now.”

“That’s it.”

“That’s it. Come see me again next month sometime,” Bennett said with a wave of her hand. “Now shoo!”

 

 

“So what’s on the agenda tonight?” Elena grabbed a handful of French fries from Bonnie’s tray across the table and shoved them into her mouth. 

“Get your own food,” Bonnie said from behind her book, absentmindedly chewing on a carrot stick. “And eat something with vitamins in it.”

“It’s not like I need vitamins, remember?”

Bonnie peered over the top of her paperback, “I wonder about that sometimes. Like… _vampires_ , you guys still eat but do you…”

“Hey,” Caroline plopped down on the bench next to Bonnie. “What did we say about the ‘v-word’?” She glared at them pointedly. “We are _normal_ , ordinary sophomores, right?”

Elena twirled her phone around in her hand and tried to remember the rules, why they came to Los Angeles, what they were allowed to talk about, who they were allowed to miss, “So you and Dawn going out tonight, Care?”

“God, subtle much?” Caroline raised her eyebrows at her and Bonnie smiled, ducking further into her book to hide it. Caroline sighed, “No. Something about a research project, she canceled on me like twenty minutes ago. I’d drag you out, but the TA in your Humanities class told me there’s a pop quiz tomorrow, so you should really stay in and study.”

“Seriously Caroline, is there a TA on this campus that you _haven’t_ seduced?”

Caroline glared at Elena, “Yeah, okay. Let’s passive aggressively attack _my_ love life.”

Elena glared down at the cheeseburger on her plate. 

“What day is it today anyway, or is it just me or is time moving really weird here?” Bonnie put her book down, spine up. 

Caroline looked around the bustling cafeteria and beamed, “Maybe this is what life feels like when we’re not running for our lives or plotting a hostile takeover in between classes?”

“I can live with that,” Bonnie put her hand on top of Elena’s. “Even if it means…” She blinked tears out of her eyes and smiled her crooked smile. Elena smiled back, turning her hand to squeeze Bonnie’s. Caroline wrapped her arm around Bonnie’s shoulders and added her hand to the pile. 

A host of unnamed lost drifted in the space between them. 

The sound of laughter and clinking cutlery and people milling around, talking or shouting or whispering flooded over them. 

“It’s Thursday,” Elena mused suddenly, breaking the silence between them. And on the horizon there was Friday, Saturday, Sunday… years of days that they could fill anyway they wished, anyway they could, without looking over their shoulder. 

“Book club night,” Bonnie snatched up her book. “Shit. Book club night!” She looked up at them, eyes wild, “I’m only on chapter three! What time is it?”

Some bro with a flat-brimmed hat on sideways and pants hanging off his ass, leaned over Elena’s head, “It’s only noon, beautiful. You have plenty of time.” He winked at her before walking over to a large group of guys a few feet away, a large salad on his tray. 

Bonnie stared wide-eyed at him for a moment before turning to Elena, “Did that actually just happen?”

Caroline waved her hand dismissively, “Anyway, he’s wrong. It’s actually closer to one.”

“What time is book club?” Elena asked, stealing more of Bonnie’s fries. 

Bonnie hit Elena’s hand with her book, “Not until nine.”

“I didn’t know you were in a book club.”

“That’s because you _never_ pay attention to the calendar in the room,” Caroline said exasperatedly. “Seriously Elena?”

Elena gestured at the piles of textbooks in front of her, “In case you haven’t noticed, I don’t really have time for book clubs. My advisor is trying to set me up with an internship over winter break.”

“I only joined a couple of weeks ago. Dawnie’s roommate convinced me to join hers, it’s really fun. She’s… kinda weird? But everyone else is super nice.” Bonnie stood up, “I’m stealing some of your candy stash from under the bed and holing up in the library for a few hours.”

“Hey! How’d you know about my candy stash?” Elena spluttered. She looked up into Bonnie’s amused eyes, “Oh yeah… well good luck or whatever.”

“You’re both obnoxious and impossible,” Bonnie threw over her shoulder as she skipped out of the doors that led outside. 

Caroline pointed one perfectly polished fingernail at Elena, “Study for your Humanities pop quiz, and don’t forget about your midterm in Bio next week.”

“What are you going to do tonight?”

Caroline stood up and smiled, “I’m going to avoid the room as long as possible so that you can mope in peace.” She leaned over and kissed Elena on the cheek, “But I may come home early if you want the company?”

Elena glared at her textbooks, “No reason for you to wallow with me.”

Caroline stood over her for a moment, “Elena…”

“What?”

“You’ve never been so… unsure before. If you want something, you always get it.”

Elena shifted on the bench. 

“Just… don’t leave too much of our old life behind that you forget who you are.”

 

 

It didn’t take long for Dawn Summer to become such an integral part of their lives that it almost felt as though they had been saving her a place at the metaphorical table that is their fucked up lives. Caroline was one small step away from adding a green section to her elaborate schedule hanging on the wall – and if it wasn’t for the fact that Dawn’s personal schedule seemed to change by the hour she probably wouldn’t have waited for permission. 

Dawn flitted through their door like a leaf on the wind – arms full of books for Bonnie or ads to kitschy new boutiques for Caroline, somehow anticipating their needs before they were even aware of them. 

Except, she never really seemed to bring anything for Elena, without making it painfully obvious. After their comfort and familiarity on their first of many movie nights, Dawn suddenly put up walls Elena couldn’t penetrate. Primarily because she did it in such a way that no one would notice. She smiled, she laughed, she made the same ridiculous jokes; but she didn’t catch Elena’s eye over Caroline’s head and wink knowingly, she didn’t lean into Elena’s side when she laughed, she didn’t make herself comfortable on Elena’s bed without asking. Even as she wound herself so single-mindedly into every facet of their lives, she kept more of herself back. 

And every day it felt to Elena like little pieces of her self were slipping out of her hands like sand. 

 

 

The cafeteria in their dorm was supposed to be the best on-campus. That’s what Caroline’s copious research suggested, anyway.

_”It **is** important, Bonnie!” Caroline had practically growled from the backseat. _

_“Why can’t we just live off-campus?” Elena muttered, her hands griping the steering wheel as hard as she dared, knuckles white._

_“Starting over means doing things right, means being **normal** ,” Caroline explained for the third time that day. “We’re driving in a straight line from crazy-town with Originals and Travelers and werewolves and dopplegangers into normalcy.”_

_Bonnie sighed, “Care, I watched every episode of **The OC** with you in junior high, what makes you think you have either of us convinced that you are looking for **normalcy** in Los Angeles?”_

_Elena’s eyes flicked instinctively to the rearview mirror, a long expanse of dark, empty highway greeted her. It wasn’t a straight line they were on, twisting and turning down lonely highways, changing cars every three days, looking back despite promising each other they wouldn’t._

_Tears blurred Elena’s vision, “We aren’t characters in a teen soap opera, Caroline. Living near a beach won’t suddenly make our lives more glamorous.”_

__Running away won’t suddenly guarantee any of us a happily ever after. __

_“But maybe driving to the other side of a continent will be enough to make our lives a little less fucking tragic.” Glancing up at them, Caroline chuckled, “Or at least our love lives.”_

_Elena and Bonnie smiled wanly at the joke that fell flat in the air between them._

_Stefan._

_Jeremy._

_Damon._

_Tyler._

_Matt._

_Caroline’s face sank, she leaned back against the seat and sighed._

_Bonnie turned around, smile wide, the remnant of a tear already brushed away with the tips of her fingers, “So tell us about this cafeteria.”_

_“Well… there’s this chicken cordon bleu thing… “_

 

Elena picked up her fork and played with her chicken, every bit as delicious as Caroline’s research had promised, swirling a bite-sized piece around with her fork. _The new normal,_ Caroline kept saying. Except Elena had the sneaking suspicion that… 

“Penny for your thoughts?” a low voice interrupted. 

Elena looked up into Dawn’s smiling face, “I thought you had plans?”

Dawn raised an eyebrow as she carefully peeled the tinfoil top off her yogurt. 

“I mean…” Elena cleared her throat, “Caroline mentioned that you had to raincheck on whatever plans you two had for tonight.”

Things new Elena was not: chill. 

She shoved the bite of lukewarm chicken and mashed potatoes into her mouth and tried to imagine a reality in which she wasn’t a complete spaz. 

“Yeah, I have some stuff I have to do tonight. How’s---?” Dawn gestured at the pile of notes under Elena’s elbow. 

“Fine. Another day, another pop quiz on the horizon.”

Dawn licked her spoon, her eyes on focused on a spot somewhere over Elena’s left shoulder, “You’ll get through it. I gotta jet.” She stood up, empty yogurt in one hand and a dinner roll in the other. 

“Hey wait,” Elena shot out her hand to catch Dawn’s wrist, but thought better of it about a second too late, leaving her hand flopping in the air. “Um… good luck I guess.”

Dawn’s eyes grazed over Elena’s face, seeming to search for something, “Yeah… um… thanks?”

Elena spent the rest of her evening in the library, alternatively shooting angry looks at anyone talking over a whisper and muttering to herself while flipping wildly through her notes like a crazy person. 

 

 

Mildred’s grave became the one place in Elena’s life that felt like a haven and not like a trap ready to spring. She would have said that it was normal college blues, except that she didn’t really mind her classes all that much. The work was daunting, but she was taking enough general requirements (hand-picked by Caroline) that it didn’t feel that much different from high school. 

Except…

Well, high school _did_ contain more memories of blood and death and trauma than classroom time, specifically. But in the hazy recesses of her mind that remembered a time when her parents were still around and things were normal. 

_On the surface, maybe._

Elena scowled out the window of the bus, this time empty aside from one man in his forties with an old-fashioned suit on and a little blue carnation he twirled between his fingers. Her inner monologue had taken on a bit of a snarky edge since her meeting with Dr. Halverson’s question about her mom. 

_Which one?_ seemed to chant in her ear from the moment she gave her answer. 

Her mother, Miranda, had seen a writer in her. Had nourished it, purchased her journals and notebooks from the time she was old enough to hold a stubby pencil in her small hand. It was something they shared and it was something that still felt… _sacred_. Almost in a way that medicine did not. 

Medicine was public, it was a service, it was an act. And her father’s medicine… it had been twisted up in everything that she was _now_. Elena _Gilbert_ , no matter what. Despite everything that she was now – no longer continuing a tradition of hunting the hunters, instead she ran from it all. Hiding away in the sun. Pretending that a scalpel in her hand will make her a Gilbert in all the ways she never was. 

_Petrova_.

It rang through her blood like a signal. 

_Which one?_

Her mother, Miranda, had seen a writer in her. But Isobel?

Elena nodded goodbye to the driver, stepping off the bus and taking a breath of air. Los Angeles felt dirty everywhere she went, except here in this little cemetery hidden back amongst a throng of houses. Not that she had visited many cemeteries in the area, or parks for that matter, but it still _felt_ different. Elena picked her way through the headstones, so familiar with the layout that she was able to wind her way to Mildred easily. 

Isobel, the brilliant and devoted researcher. Elena sat down and leaned against Mildred’s stone, closing her eyes, wrapping her arms around her legs. Isobel, the fanatic obsessive. Isobel, what would she want for her daughter?

Elena saw herself, young (forever young), in an office lined with books, shuffling through papers older than Katherine, a frown on her face. Maybe that was what Isobel had wanted, for her to study and research. Like Jemma. The scene in her mind shifted, another woman with long brown hair sat at the desk, surrounded by books. 

_Dawn._

Dawn was everything Isobel might have wanted in a daughter, if she had stayed human. Elena could just imagine the rousing debates around the Saltzman family table; Dawn, Isobel, and Alaric shouting out insults in a variety of tongues and quoting ancient texts at each other. Elena chuckled to herself and shook her head, opening her eyes slowly. 

Dawn was everything Isobel wouldn’t have wanted in a daughter as a vampire. 

But neither was Elena, probably. 

_Which one?_

Elena opened up the journal the old woman had given her, it was almost half-full of scribblings and doodles and random half-notes, song lyrics, random bits of poetry or quotes Bonnie read aloud to them at night. Nothing at all like the steady stream-of-consciousness writing that her diaries had always so typically held before. Before… what?

Grayson, the surgeon, the doctor. 

John, the vampire hunter. A researcher in his own way. A playboy – if aunt Jenna was right. And aunt Jenna was usually right. 

Most of what she knew about her parents was their deaths. Each one imprinted upon her mind like a tattoo upon her skin. No matter how much distance and time passed by. Elena outlined a skull in the corner of a page with the lyrics from _Running up that Hill_ scrawled haphazardly across it. Maybe that’s just how it always feels, to be a child with dead parents. Somehow their lives get lost in all the facts and realities of them not being there anymore, completely overshadowed by their deaths. She drew a vine twining through the skull, twisting through the eye sockets and between the crooked teeth. It wasn’t like she really _knew_ them. 

Miranda. 

Grayson. 

Isobel.

John. 

Hell… the closest thing she ever had to an actual parent that didn’t tell her half-truths or hide from her their true selves was Jenna. 

Unless you count Alaric. 

She drew petals around the base of the skull. 

Might as well count Alaric. 

What a great track record she had. The universe gave her three sets of parents and they all died. _You **are** death_ a voice rang in her ear. Another flower sprouted from her twisting vine on the page. The voice was vaguely reminiscent of a girl she knew once. Someone dead, probably. She drew another skull beside the first, in profile. 

_What a cliché you are,_ she scribbled above the skulls. Drew a line around her words. A tombstone. Tombstones only tell the truth, they can’t lie. Because there are no lies left to tell. 

And that wasn’t true, either. Lies linger. They stretch out into the expanse of time and lick at the future, shaping it into something equally ugly and beautiful. Her vine twisted around the ironic tombstone, dropping more petals next to the skulls. Lies are what make reality true. 

_Bullshit_. 

One of these days she was going to wake up and the voice in her ear was going to have a name, one she wasn’t willing to say, and one that wasn’t her own. So she was full of shit. So she was a vampire sitting in a graveyard doodling flowers growing out of skulls and humming the lyrics to trashy emo punk music under her breath, so everyone is their own stereotype and she might as well embrace hers. 

_Which one?_

A family of researchers and hunters, all bent towards the same task: to either become or destroy the thing she was. A cloud hanging over the tombstone on her page let loose a few overly large raindrops. Well she already was what she was, and she wasn’t really interested in loosing herself in a pile of crusty old books, she knew everything she never wanted to know about what she was and wasn’t. She was tired of learning new things about the monstrous things she was made up of. 

Blood is thicker than water, but only sustains the darkest things. 

_Which one?_

She shut her journal and stood up. 

 

 

 

Elena leaned over her laptop and read over the last sentence she had just typed, mouthing along a little as she did. _Keats also suggested that we should rejoice in our “negative capability”—he believed that the only way to experience true happiness, was to experience true pain._ She poised her hands over the keyboard again, waiting for inspiration to strike her. 

“Really glad I never knew you, I’d probably have back-handed you,” she muttered fiercely at the dingy copy of [](%E2%80%9D)_Ode to Melancholy_ sitting on the table next to her. She had somehow managed to snag a table outside, in the shade, during peak hours and only had another forty minutes or so before her computer insisted on being plugged in. Of course, she saw Dawn right at the moment when it seemed like the muse might actually allow her to finish her paper before that happened. 

And jumped up, waving enthusiastically, “Hey Dawnie!”

Dawn stopped, looked in the opposite direction a little distractedly.

“To your right!” Elena laughed. 

Dawn turned, hesitated a minute, and then smiled tightly, shifting her books in her arms as she walked over. “Hey Elena, enjoying the sunshine?”

“No,” Elena wrinkled her nose. “If I was enjoying the sunshine, I’d be at a watering hole in a bikini with a beer in one hand and a…” she coughed, blushing. 

“And?” Dawn prompted.

“And a … hot dog in the other,” Elena smiled. 

_And a hot girl in the other._

Dawn shook her head, “Don’t trust anything called a ‘watering hole’ in California.” She held up her finger in mock admonition, “Promise me?”

“Yes ma’am,” Elena teased back. 

“What are you working on?” Dawn picked up the torn up piece of paper with _Melancholy_ printed on it. “Keats?” 

Elena shrugged, “Kind of an asshole, I think.”

Dawn laughed, “Undoubtedly. But still, brilliant in that way that assholes always are.” She put down the paper and backed up a half step, “ _She dwells with Beauty—Beauty that must die; / And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips / Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh, / Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips_ …” She blushed and Elena’s heart plummeted to her stomach. 

Elena cleared her throat awkwardly and picked up the slip of paper covered in her notes, “ _His soul shalt taste the sadness of her might, / And be among her cloudy trophies hung._ ”

“An asshole with a helleva way with words,” Dawn sighed. 

“Hmm.”

“I—“ Dawn frowned and bit her lip. “I gotta jet. I’ll see ya later.”

Elena looked up, surprised, “You work too hard Dawn Summers.”

Dawn grimaced, shifting her pile of books from one arm to the other. 

“Caroline wants you to come over for a movie on Thursday, you game?”

“Yeah… I’ll… I’ll txt her later? Bye, Elena. Good luck with your paper.”

Elena blinked down at her computer screen, “Fucking Keats.” Her fingers flashed against the keyboard, pounding out her conclusion at a terrifying speed. A group of freshman a few feet away glanced her way rather worriedly. She muttered along as she typed, “ _beauty that must die / and joy, whose hand is ever at his lips/bidding adieu_ , melancholy exists when you know that the rose, though beautiful, will wilt and the only way to experience the fullness of that rose is to know that it will wilt. For Keats, the unanswerability of the relationship man has with the divine, is the best part of human experience.”

 _Bullshit._

“For reals,” she answered herself, slamming her laptop lid closed and stomping off to the cafeteria to engage in a binge of carbs before her next class began. 

 

 

“Caroline ran off to get food and Bonnie isn’t back from her study session yet, but you can hang out until they get back if you want?” 

Which is sort of maybe how a bad porno starts on a website titled www-dot-naughtycoeds-dot-com, but alas is just the sort of thing that is usually said in real life right before an excruciatingly uncomfortable twenty minutes commences. Maybe in a bad lesbian porno, Elena would have been wearing nothing but a pair of lacy panties and a corset and would have needed help getting it laced and Dawn would have been surprisingly innocent, yet wearing cut-off shorts with a bikini top and stilettos. After twenty minutes of stilted conversation and awkward silences, Elena almost wished that there were a set of amateur porno directors in the room with them, because then at least there would have been something to _do_ other than sit there awkwardly in an old pair of Jeremy’s boxers and a baggy t-shirt that may have belonged to either Matt or Stefan or even Alaric at some point, trying to count the number of Hello Kitties on Dawn’s pajama pants and acting like that’s a totally normal reaction to a person being in your dorm room. 

Elena’s phone chimed, making the two of them jump.

“It’s Caroline. She got held up, on her way back – but there’s traffic so maybe another half hour?” Elena looked up at Dawn. “Sorry. She’s usually so …”

“Punctual?”

Elena smiled, “Something like that.”

Dawn shrugged from her perch up on Bonnie’s bunk, “I have some reading that I can do in the meantime.” 

And then she disappeared into the upper atmosphere that was Bonnie’s domain. 

Not three weeks ago, she would have been shoulder to shoulder with Elena on _her_ bed but now… Elena chewed on her thumbnail for a minute, looking up at the bunk and running through a number of possibilities to get Dawn back down and talking to her again. 

She could spill a bag of blood on the bed and start screaming for help… but that would mean calling an ambulance and having to explain all sorts of nasty things like “oh sorry Caroline, I wanted Dawn’s attention so now there’s blood on the rug” which would go over a lot better than whatever she’d have to say to the paramedics. Except maybe Dawn would ride to the hospital with her and hold her hand and tell her a funny story about the time she had stitches when she was a kid. 

Dawn totally got stitches when she was a kid, every kid gets stitches, and Dawn is clumsy. It was the least far-fetched part of this plan. 

She could fall on the ground and pretend to sprain her ankle, which would result in Dawn having to seek out an ice pack and hold it to Elena’s ankle and help carry/heave her back into her bed and fetch her juice because she’s feeling so weak. 

Elena tried out for a play at her elementary school when she was in the fourth grade. She thought she was wonderful… until she got home and watched the video evidence. She never auditioned for anything ever again. Acting was not her forte. There’s no way she’d be able to convince Dawn that she sprained anything. 

How about something simple like, “hey whatcha reading?” except Dawn had a tendency to get really wild with her explanations about medieval texts and there really wasn’t anything sexy in that, as far as Dawn could tell. Or they could watch ridiculous cat videos on YouTube!

Elena peered up at the bunk and listened to the steady sound of Dawn’s breathing, the scratch of her pencil against paper, the rustle of pages turning. Her feet suddenly popped into view, she was clearly laying on her stomach, her feet swaying above her like a flag. 

Elena sighed and fell back against her pillow. “Hey excuse me I know you’re busy solving centuries-old mysteries and being a general badass of all things history, wanna watch a kitten fall over?” Lamer than lame. 

Something was poking into her back, Elena felt under the pile of towels, blankets, and clothes she was lying on and pulled out her cemetery journal. Or, that’s what she called the book the old woman gave her. She sat up, leaned her back against the wall, and opened it, flipping through the pages idly until she found an empty one. She had started filling it up from the middle out and then started jumping around. There was something soothing to the way nothing was in order and nothing had a proper place, almost as comforting as her journals had been _before_ ; straight lines moving in one direction telling one story front to back. 

She picked up a pen from the nightstand, neon green, and began writing about the night, about Dawn in the top bunk, about all the fantastic things she _didn’t_ do to get Dawn’s attention. She was smiling to herself, sketching a sloppy picture of herself falling off her bed, when Dawn leaned over, “Is that a journal?”

Elena nodded without looking up, “Yeah… it’s a new one.”

Dawn watched her for a moment, not saying anything. 

Elena didn’t know how good Dawn’s eyes were, but it probably was best that she move away from the page that had Dawn’s name on it twenty times, so she flipped to another blank page and started doodling interlocking spirals. She remembered Jenna used to leave little spirals on all the scrap paper in the house, envelopes and post-its, the pad by the phone. She started to put them in the margins of her notebooks at school after… it was actually really calming, the slow circles going out and out and never connecting. Laying over and under each other. 

She glanced up and saw Dawn still watching her, “Have you ever kept a journal?”

Dawn hesitated, her eyes full of… something Elena couldn’t quite put her finger on: fear? doubt? “When I was a kid I had these notebooks. The Dawnster Chronicles, Cordelia called them.”

“Another sister?”

“Sure.”

“So you don’t keep one anymore?” 

Dawn’s eyes turned hard, a twitch appearing in her cheek like she was grinding her teeth. 

“I just…” Elena hesitated. _What the hell._ “I kept one all the time and then… something happened and I stopped.”

“What happened?”

“Death. Trauma. Drama.” Elena’s tone was wry and self-deprecating. Dawn looked away, embarrassed. For her? Or for herself? Elena couldn’t tell. “There was…” she looked up at Dawn’s profile and stopped herself. 

Dawn turned back, her eyes a bright, emerald green against her pale face, “What? There was… what?”

“A fire…” Elena whispered it, as if she could take back the truth of it. 

Dawn looked at her hard, “A fire?” There was something in her voice that almost seemed accusing, it took Elena by surprise. “So you don’t have any of your old journals anymore?”

“All gone,” Elena snapped her fingers. “Like that.”

“Mine, too.” Dawn opened her mouth, closed it again. 

“The Dawnster Chronicles? They were burned?”

“I burned them,” Dawn looked down at her, like she was ready for a fight. Elena had seen that expression on people before, too many. It said, _I dare you_ without words. 

“Why?” she breathed out slowly. 

Dawn shook her head, “The fire? Was it an accident?”

“No,” Elena’s lips tripped over the truth, so accustomed to the lie. In her heart, there was a crack that would never heal and in it she could see herself, face sticky with dried tears, lighting a match and walking away from an entire life like it never mattered at all. She looked up at Dawn, imagined her doing the same thing, and it filled her with an inescapable sense of loss. For what, she didn’t know; for not knowing the girl that existed before that heart-breaking moment when all that is left of the past is a need for cleansing. 

She wondered, wildly, what that girl would have thought of the old-Elena, the human Elena. Would the writer of the Dawnster Chronicles have loved a girl like Elena Gilbert?

Did the destroyer of those books have a scar on her heart that matched her own?

“Did you set it?” Dawn’s voice cracked a little, but Elena ignored it. 

“Yes,” Elena met her gaze with steady eyes. “Didn’t you.” 

It wasn’t a question, they both knew the answer. 

Dawn smiled wanly, “I haven’t written since then. Not like before.”

Elena flipped the pages with her thumb. “Not like before,” she whispered. 

“Sorry I’m late, you two!” Caroline crowed from the doorway. “But I found this _great_ Vietnamese place!”


End file.
